The Sky for August 2025

August is known for the annual Perseid meteor shower, which can often (but not always) produce a nice show for skywatchers. There are also about a dozen minor meteor showers that aren’t worth watching, that AI-driven social media pages are now picking up on and promoting as if they are something to see. Unfortunately, even the best meteor showers barely qualify for the name “shower”, so managing expectations is important.

Even a single meteor arcing across the sky can be a memorable sight, which is probably why many people “wish on a star” when they see one. Meteor observing requires no special equipment and is a casual way to enjoy the sky with the occasional “wow!” moments of a meteor. Don’t hype over numbers, and enjoy your time under the stars, and you will enjoy observing meteor showers.

What’s Going On

Meteor showers are basically caused when the Earth passes through a cloud of dust as it orbits the Sun. These interplanetary dust bunnies are left behind by comets or asteroids as they orbit the Sun. When our planet moves through one at high speed, the dust all burns up in our atmosphere, with each grain of sand or tiny rock becoming visible as a meteor (a.k.a. “shooting star”, “falling star”, etc.). Because we can predict their dates in advance, meteor showers are usually one of the first things put onto astronomy calendar websites.

But are meteor showers actually something worth watching? The answer depends on which meteor shower you’re looking at, and how much effort you’re willing to put in to seeing it.

The Effects of Light and Time

Most meteors are faint, and so if you have bright lights nearby then you won’t see the faint ones, which cuts your rates down significantly. Observing inside the city means you will see only a quarter or less of the predicted rates. To see a meteor shower well, you need to drive as far from city lights as you can.

If the Moon is in the sky, that’s like city lights you can’t drive away from. When the Moon is in the sky you can also lose about 75% of the meteors predicted.

And if that isn’t enough: meteor rates start very low in the evening, get stronger after midnight, and peak in the few hours before dawn. I have observed the Perseid meteor shower from inside the city before midnight and literally seen not a single meteor per hour. I ahve also observed the Perseids from a rural location with no moon, and seen 2 meteors per minute in the pre-dawn hours (120 per hour). So, these factors make a big difference in what you will see.

So What Is Worth Watching?

In the summer, the answer is easy: the Perseids. That’s it. All the other minor meteor showers are underwhelming for the average skywatcher. The South Delta Aquariids, which peak on July 31, have a rate of between 5 and 10 meteors per hour, so if you are a hardcore meteor observer that’s one to try as well when (like this year) it lines up with the dark of the Moon.

In 2025, the Perseids peak when the Moon is nearly full, so even if you go out in the pre-dawn hours of August 11-12 (the peak night) you will likely only see 10-30 meteors per hour this year. For numbers, it’s not a great year because of the Moon. But, that means there’s no real need to drive far from the city; any reasonably dark space where you can see the sky will do this year.

It’s Not All About Numbers

Remember, though: the sheer number of meteors isn’t the only metric to use. I have seen single meteors that were so bright and beautiful they have stuck in my memory for decades. Often, evening meteors tend to be long and bright – so even if there aren’t a lot, the ones you see can be well worth it.

The bottom line is: meteor showers are a good time to see shooting stars, but don’t expect a laser light show. Each streak of light you see is a piece of dust left over from the formation of the solar system, a reminder of the era when planetary collisions were common as they shaped our planet. Keep expectations low, and appreciate whatever meteors you do manage to catch. A night under the stars is always time well spent.

A meteor (a.k.a. falling star, shooting star) looks like a bright streak across the starry sky that lasts for a second or two before fading away. Most people believe they are rare enough that you should make a wish when you see one, but they are surprisingly common if you watch the sky a lot. On any given night with no Moon, if you get away from city lights and watch the sky continuously, you’ll see up to a half-dozen meteors per hour. Any light sources – the Moon, city lights, you phone – will reduce that number to near zero.

Each meteor you see is actually a tiny piece of dust about the size of a grain of sand which is burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Space isn’t empty, you see – it’s dusty, with all the dust leftover from the big construction job that was the formation of the solar system. As the Earth orbit the Sun, it plows through the dust at over 100,000 kilometers per hour. It’s a one-sided collision, and the poor speck of dust disintegrates in a flash of light that we can see from the ground as a meteor.

So, most meteor showers don’t produce many meteors; that’s the bad news. The good news is, the Perseids in August is one of them, which makes them probably the most famous meteor shower of all. And, in 2024 the Moon will be out of the sky during the crucial morning hours. If you can get away from city lights under a clear, dark sky, you might see up to 60 meteors an hour – one a minute – in the early morning hours of August 12.

That’s pretty specific timing, but luckily the Perseids “dust bunny” is more than one day wide. The Earth actually enters the outer edge of it in late July, and each morning the rates will increase until the peak on the 11th-12th. So, we have several chances to see a decent Perseids display this year.

The key point to remember is that all meteor showers are best between about 1:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time. Pre-midnight observing might be 1/10 or less of the morning rates. Really, you have to stay up all night to see this.

To get the best view, get as far away from city lights as practical, and set up a reclining lawn chair or blanket so you can lean back and see as much of the sky as possible. Keep all the lights around you off, especially if you are in a park of other spot with other observers. One peek at your phone will shut off the natural night vision of your eyes for up to ten minutes, so you really need to avoid looking at any lights. (If you need to keep your car running, cover the headlights with a blanket or something so you don’t blast the whole park with your lights!) If you have any lights nearby, put them behind you out of your view, and just watch the sky. You don’t need a telescope or binoculars – in fact, those instruments restrict your field of view so much that you probably won’t see any meteors through them at all. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, and they only last a second or two – literally, don’t blink or you can miss them.

You can take pictures of meteors, but it involves a little luck, and some understanding of your camera. If you have a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can put it on a tripod and set your exposure manually for something like 5 or 10 seconds – you’ll get a lot of pictures of stars, but if you’re lucky a meteor will happen while you’re shooting, and it will show up in one picture.

If you’re using your phone camera, you might need to download a better camera app than the one your phone came with – check out the app store for one that is designed for night or sky photography. The same tactic applies – take lots of pictures, and hope you catch one. Make sure the light from your camera doesn’t interfere with your vision, though – just take the pictures now, and look at them later.

One thing to watch for: satellites. There are piles of satellites that will show up in your images as streaks of light. You can tell satellites by the trail being the same brightness and thickness throughout; meteors tend to start faint and narrow, get brighter and wider, and then trail out again.

While technically there are other meteor showers in July and August, in practice these are not noticeable to the average observer and are scientific designations only. They’re named after the constellation or star that the meteors appear to radiate from, but most of them produce a meteor every couple of hours or so – not even a spritzing, let alone a shower. Even the bigger South Delta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks in late July, only produces about 5 meteors an hour at best. If you are interested in these minor meteor showers, there is backyard science that can be done by tracking them with a camera, though; visit the International Meteor Organization for some great information on getting deeper into the science of meteor observing.

tl;dr: The morning of August 12th between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. you will probably see quite a few meteors. The morning before and after, you’ll still see a good number. The rest of the summer, you’ll hardly see any, but you might see one anytime you are looking at the stars.